Pietro Labriola’s time in Tim comes and his challenge as new CEO will be one above all: to complete the group separation plan, to divide the network from services. And create value. The manager is very clear about the focus for the next few months: “My goal – he explains shortly after the appointment – is to make the entire group express its potential, enhancing the assets in the interest of all shareholders”. A challenge, he says, which requires “cohesion”, which he immediately finds in the unanimity with which – in a board of directors of an hour and a half – he is co-opted into the board and with which he is given the powers of head of the company. The career of the 54-year-old Apulian manager, second marriage to a woman he met in Brazil, a daughter, takes off in Infostrada. And, following Riccardo Ruggiero, he joined Telecom Italia in 1996. He starts with the launch of Alice, under the guidance of Marco Patuano he takes care of the launch of CuboVision, forerunner of TimVision. Franco Bernabé sent him first to take care of the fixed business in Italy and then to Brazil as operations manager (coo) first under Rodrigo Abreu and then with Stefano De Angelis. When he thinks it’s his turn, the CEO Amos Genish prefers Sami Foguel and, in October 2018, for a few months, he returns to Italy. But in 2019 here is the revenge: back in Rio de Janeiro as number one. To put it there is Luigi Gubitosi (the former CEO of Tim who is now replacing), at the suggestion – they say – of Vincent Bolloré’s Vivendi, Tim’s first shareholder with 23.75%, with whom Labriola has cultivated excellent relations since 2016.
The manager’s name – very pop: he is famous for his tattoos, his flashy free time clothes, his passion for Inter Milan, for surfing and snowboarding – returned to Italy at the end of last year, when on Tim’s table, already bewildered by three useful alarms that cost Gubitosi an armchair, the expression of interest of a fund in New York, Kkr, which promises a takeover bid for 50.5 cents, falls. The project? Tim’s split in two, between network and services. The prospect of the takeover bid immediately finds Vivendi contrary. Not only for the price, judged low, but also because the French believe that the plan of the Americans – who plan to bring the sum of the shares of the title at least to the euro – can do it too. Who to call for the purpose? Labriola, who proved to be up to it in Brazil. Many, then, remember his role in 2013 alongside President Bernabè and CEO Patuano to study the spin-off of the network. One of the many projects that ended up in thin air. Now there are no alternatives to a proportional split. We will start immediately: on January 26, the board of directors will examine the guidelines of the plan, to approve it on March 2. Thus two companies will be born: one dedicated to the network (NetCo), with 30,000 employees and most of the debt, where Sparkle and Telsy would also converge, and one dedicated to services (ServiceCo), with the other 12,500 Italian employees and burdened by less than 10 billion in debt, which also includes Tim Brasil, the cloud business, Olivetti and TimVision. In the middle of an unknown: what will Kkr do? The Americans have not left the scene. Indeed: the pressure on politics has increased, in the hope that on January 26, Tim’s board of directors will open the doors to allow them the “due diligence” to which they have subordinated the takeover bid. Not blowing air. But the decision of the board of directors to confirm to the president Salvatore Rossi the delegation of the communication on the “expression of interest” of the fund “and the process that followed” keeps him at stake. And it was the only moment of friction in yesterday’s council, in which the French would have expressed their disappointment. For Paris, the Kkr parenthesis is closed. However, the fund could force its hand by launching the takeover bid anyway, which would risk crashing into the government wall. Cdp also considers the path of the internal plan convenient and yesterday supported Labriola, the man of the split and of the single network, since for NetCo the wedding with Open Fiber will be the next step.